When I was a newly single mother of three, for some reason I decided to take my kids to Disneyland. By myself. Because I’m nuts. But I did it, and boy was I relieved when it was over.

The last, easy day

Now, the relief didn’t settle in until the last day we were there, when we got up in the morning and took the shuttle to the Happiest Place on Earth in order to shop. I was breaking out the charge card and making my kids’ dreams come true. I’d told them that they could each have one thing, whatever they wanted, I didn’t care what it was or what it cost, but we’d have to get it on the last day. They would each have to remember where the thing was.

Though I’m a little fuzzy on the wheres, I actually remember what each of them got! My oldest got a Milne-style big Pooh, and my middle girl got some kind of anniversary Mickey in a satin jacket, and my youngest got the imperious pug from Pocahontas–the one with the ruff. He was larger than life-size.

We boarded the shuttle back to the hotel, and I felt myself relaxing. I hadn’t given much thought to how vigilant I’d had to be, but I had wrangled the kids through Disneyland for 3+ days. No one had been snatched or lost or damaged in any way. They were all decently fed, moderately rested, not sunburned, and not asthmatic. Best of all, they each had an enormous animal to clutch on the way home, in order to impress to our fellow flyers with the fact that we had just been to Disneyland.

I had done it.

When moms relax

I felt moderately triumphant as we rode the shuttle to the hotel. Tension I’d been unaware of carrying started to unlock itself from my shoulders and neck. Once we’d retrieved our bags and boarded the shuttle to the airport, I could actually feel the stress rolling out of my body. I’d been a hyper-aware mother hawk for days on end. It was almost over. We reached John Wayne International, and then our gate. By then, I felt intoxicated by my relief. Once we buckled up for the flight home, I was a jelly-like blob of relaxed motherhood. I didn’t need a cocktail. I was drunk on relief.

I’ve thought about that over the last month or so.

Today’s relief

Since November of 2016, I’ve been at a high level of vigilance and a near constant state of outrage. It’s hard to function like that. The last year-plus has been so politically chaotic. It’s easy to forget the earliest days, when Bannon was running the show and each appointment was more catastrophic than the last. Like a scab, he eventually dried up and fell off, leaving us with less orchestrated trolling and more sheer chaos. Chaos that has become entertaining. At some point, I actually started laughing about how hideous this all is, because I laugh about everything.

It’s still hideous.

I told my T about a month ago that something had changed. I wasn’t sure if I’d simply exhausted my capacity for outrage, and gone numb, or if there had been some shift in the atmosphere. I think it started, now that I consider it, with Roy Moore’s defeat. I wondered if I’d just normalized. This is how it’s going to be, I’d tell myself. There are rats in the basement and termites in the foundation, but we might be able to call in an exterminator at some point, if everything wasn’t ruined in the meantime.

A friend asked me, this morning, how I would write what’s going on in the head-spinning world of American politics. In my story, the appearance of Giuliani signals an exit strategy; that his wife has had enough, and is going to leave him unless he steps down and takes her back to Manhattan. So he brought in a trusted lawyer friend, and a more skilled lawyer to guard him legally, to help him navigate his way back to private life. But that’s what I would write if this were fiction. We are living in times so much stranger than fiction.

I realize now that I’m not numb. I’m calm. I feel a shift and a flicker of hope. I don’t exactly know what will happen next, to be honest. But something has changed, and the relief I feel is palpable. I’m not quite a blob–I’m still worried as hell–but there is some shift, something afoot.We’ll wait and see if I’m right.

It seems like I’ve been waiting for the clothes of the future for a long time. All my life, actually. And I’m getting impatient.

Caftans

My idea of the clothes of the future was no doubt colored by my early watching of Star Trek. No, not the crew uniforms–those were absurd to me, even at age nine–but when the ship made a stop at the planet Vulcan when a tortured Spock went into season needed to go upstream and spawn or whatever? (Amok Time). I remembered those Vulcans were wearing the clothes of the future. However, having googled the clothes, they are not at all as I remember them–the clothes I’m thinking of came in the later movies.

Wouldn’t we all, if given a chance, adopt these particular clothes of the future?

It turns out, probably not.

Friends weigh in

So imagine my surprise when I was out to lunch with three friends and I brought up this whole idea of futuristic clothing and what it would look like, and I got widely differing responses.

One friend said he thought the clothing of the future would be technical and responsive. If the weather changed, or you gained or lost weight, the clothing would simply adjust. This friend has lost weight this year and had to keep going “shopping” in his stored clothes to find things that fit him on the way down. So of course he liked the idea of something that would simply adjust itself to a slimmer frame.

Another friend loved the idea of reactive clothing, but he thought it would also be style-reactive. Which kind of blew my mind. I mean, here I am, imagining these lovely subdued flowy things, like Madame Gres with slightly less fabric, and and he’s imagining a world where we would easily sprout peacock feathers if we wanted to! And of COURSE people would want to. Not everyone wants to blend in with the walls. Garments would flame with embellishment and color as desired. Like we were all living in the Capitol.

All this gleeful frippery, these mods and makeups, not. I am not of the Capitol. I am a fan of the black and the charcoal and the neutral and the plain, enlivened by a shot of aubergine or teal now and then. On the day to day, I could wear black, grey and camel all the time and hardly miss colors at all. Which means I have a sort of a grimly dystopian idea of clothing of the future.

Ripley

I remember being super impressed with Ripley’s Nostromo jumpsuit in Aliens.

At the time, it struck me as functional, customizable, unisex, practical. I was all over it. Now I’m wondering what all that lacing is for. Would we specifically want the fabric over our tummies to be tightened down, a la Scarlett O’Hara getting laced up before the ball? Would Spandex not work in outer space or something? And as functional as it seems, we always end up back at the primary question with jumpsuits–how do you go to the bathroom quickly? These are important questions, but man, did it ever seem “real” to me when that movie came out.

Plain and simple

I also liked the clothing in The Giver, believe it or not.

Isn’t that depressing? it’s like, the Amish wardrobe of the future. All homespun and indigo.

I could so go for this!

Another woman weighs in

The other woman at our lunch gathering had similar ideas to my original caftan ideas. Long, graceful, easy, and with hidden pockets. Weatherproof. Soil-proof. One and done, but she envisioned these garments as metallic. Metallic seems like a stretch for me. But I could do metallic if I needed to. If it were necessary. Especially if it looked like THIS.

I would so love that! That is a beautiful handling of color and metallic and style. But is it futuristic? Also, I wonder what would happen if I began sweeping around Portland dressed like this. People would probably think I was trying to start a religious cult.

Fashion Babel

If you had the opportunity to design a clothing sensibility for the future, what would it look like? Would it be implanted peacock feathers or unisex jumpsuits? I guess the mistake we make is that somehow, in the future, clothing will gather up under one unified umbrella and fashion will flow from a single source. I think the opposite will probably happen. We will all get to wear what we want.

We are posting memes about introversion, where showing us talking to a cat at a party will help the world to better understand how weird we are. Since so many writers are introverts, and introverts love the internet, we are writing listicles about introverts for Buzzfeed, and going into depth about our special introverted ways on Medium, and generally feeling misunderstood and special.

I think we’d probably better get over ourselves.

The reality of Introversion

My coworker heard a quick phone call between me and my daughter today. In it, I figured out how many people are coming over for Easter, so my daughter can appropriately size the Family Mac-n-Cheese® she’s bringing to dinner. My coworker sounded so sweetly excited when she called over the wall. “Karen! You’re having a big gathering! Are you excited?”

“No.” I said to her. “I’m never excited.”

I never want to go to anything. Ever. It all sounds terrible. Book group? Oh god no. Hosting my family for the holidays? Too many people. Dinner at a restaurant? Jesus Christ, you have to be kidding. A cruise to Bermuda? Just kill me now.

Handling myself

What do you do when your knee jerk reaction is to hide from all social contact? You do what I do. Which is, I dread everything, but I go to everything. Because I know I’m going to have a wonderful time. We are going to have the best discussion about the book I loved (or hated, sometimes the best discussions are about books I hate), and the food is going to be amazing and the company is going to be sparkling and Bermuda is going to be everything I ever dreamed of and more; pink sand, turquoise water, sunshine and mild ocean air. But my baseline expectation remains that I will hate ALL of it, even though experience should lead me to believe the exact opposite.

And so, I always go.

When I was younger, I would listen to my inner misanthrope. She was a grump. She insisted I keep clear of all merrymaking. She convinced me that no one wanted me there anyway, not really, so I’d just spare everyone the horror of my attendance. I stayed home a lot. Then I sat around and wondered why everyone was having a better life than I was.

I didn’t make the connection until I was in my thirties, at which point I learned to get up and go places, where I would have fun because I’m actually great at parties. As long as I can leave whenever I want to. I must be able to do the Irish Good-Bye in order to have fun. As long as I can bounce without a word at leave-taking, I tend to stay and have fun.

Another strategy

There are other strategies for dealing with the self-imposed isolation of introversion. One is to marry an extrovert. I have had relationships with extroverts, and survived them. I understand that some people find this marriage-of-opposites to be helpful because the extrovert (some guy) is always dragging the introvert (me) out and about. The rallying cry is always the same. “Come on, it’ll be fun!” This mindless insistence on activity paired with my mulish social withdrawal doesn’t sound fun at all to me. It reminds me of a cheerful child wearing a huge lead boot.

I am the lead boot.

I’m happiest with another introvert, like the man I’m with now. He might even be more introverted than I am. We always make plans, but we often have things we need to do first. Like, pay a bill online. Or take an antacid. Or move the laundry around. Or let the dogs out. If we are lucky, we can aggregate enough small, easily postpone-able activities to avoid the going-out plan altogether, in favor of just staying home and watching something on Netflix.

It’s perfect!

I wonder, sometimes, how we avoid spending our entire lives slumped on the couch, making fun of Flip or Flop VEGAS. But we don’t. We get out, and go to parties and plays and dinners with friends and a lot of movies. We go talk with people and smile, even if it kills us. We plan getaways and live (for the most part) like normal people. And then we come home and decompress, quietly recharging until we have to go out and do it again.

I’m busy as hell with preparations for the second Orcas book, getting ready for a literary festival in April, and working on another huge project that’s devouring hours of my time. But here’s a piece based on something “from the trunk”. It’s about grotesquerie; the worst part of any book.

Grotesquerie in rough draft

I’ve been handed some grotesque things to read in my life. A writer gave me a story about a couple who mutilated each other as part of their sex lives. He had the good sense to say, ”You might not want anything to do with me after you read this.” After forty pages of necrophilia, torture, self-mutilation, incest, matricide and so forth, I understood why he was worried. I believe he’d scared himself. That one was eventually published.

Years ago, someone I met in a writer’s group sent out 76 copies of his manuscript to various members, hoping for response. And I after I started reading it, I knew I’d never give him a response he’d enjoy hearing. The writing was endless ”telling” from a great height, the narrator looking down and pontificating madly on the chaos of the story. There wasn’t a shred of likeability or humanity in most of the characters, and the rare few who displayed any humanity were punished in one sadistic twist after another. After a point I set aside the red pencil, realizing that since no publisher in the world would ever want to publish this, there was no need to offer editorial advice.

The author wrote me, saying he was disappointed that only three or four people seemed to have finished it. I didn’t tell him that a mutual friend had told me she’d ”set it aside and gone to throw up and take a shower.” I decided stunned silence was a merciful thing. If people had told him what they really thought, he might have gone on a homicidal rampage and acted out some of the more vicious tableaux in this book.

Grotesquerie in print

There are plenty of published books that contain cannibalism, which is where I draw the line. I can’t read about it. A few books that contain it have made it past my censors–John Dollar by Wiggins, Shallows by Tim Winton, and Ahab’s Wife by…somebody, which was an incredible disappointment because the first third of the book, before they stepped on that whaling ship, was so damn good. Actually, these were all good books that I wish I’d never read. I’m sure these writers are making a big fat metaphorical point, I just can’t stomach their metaphor, so the point is always lost on me. I wish all books that contain cannibalism had a big red warning ”C” on the cover.

Maybe even worse

The same thing with animal abuse. A friend loaned me two books that contained animal abuse. Like, just handed them to me casually with a “You’ll like these,” no warning, nothing. Thanks, Friend! The books were The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks, and Wide Open by Nicola Barker. The first title is disturbing and extremely well-written. I had a glimpse of the hidden shocker, but only a glimpse. I’m good at figuring out the mysteries in the Gothic, but this time, the ending did surprise me. It all fit together beautifully. Wide Open was next. I liked it and wished I’d had the opportunity to discuss it, because beneath the plot shocks, sick humor and odd characters, there is a metaphysical twist that I haven’t quite figured out.

Because of the grotesque subject matter, I would never just hand these books off to a friend without a warning. Can you easily recommend a book that’s strength is its ability to illuminate the mindset of a character committing unthinkable, unforgivable acts, and to stir you to a horrified sympathy with that character? You have to loan these books carefully, but I have given Under the Skin, by Michel Faber, to more than one friend, and it’s one of the most disturbing novels I have ever read. I think it’s completely worth it.

Which brings us to me

This all brings me to my own experience with writing something unforgivably grotesque. Apparently, when describing some of the itchy ailments suffered by Asa Strug in Love and Mayhem at the Francie June Memorial Trailer Park, I use the phrase “butt rust.” And my friend Alex was horrified by this. She said, “I can’t believe you made me read the words butt rust, Karen!” She was upset and disgusted. I didn’t even remember putting that in the book, to be honest. So I had to go find it.

IT WAS THURSDAY morning, and the most contented man in the Francie June Memorial Trailer Park was no longer content. He itched from head to toe. His hands rummaged through his locks as if they were sorting snakes, as if his torment could be shaken free like the louse that fell by the cracked nail of his largest toe.

“Lord, send relief.”

His hands moved to scratch at his bitten, scabby neck. He tore at the skin, tears in his eyes, his teeth grinding with frustration.

“I am bedeviled.”

He stood and reached for his back, his privates, his stomach. It was more than bugs. Years of not bathing had left him with crotch rot, butt rust, and between-the-toe fungus that made his toes appear webbed. His body was nothing more than a collection of maddening itches. He dug and writhed and came dangerously close to taking the name of the Lord in vain.

“Lord! I need vinegar!”

Yes, I really wrote that

Look, that is really gross. I wrote it, and I own it. I had no choice but to submit to Alex’s disgust, because upon rereading, that passage is sick. Sick, but necessary, as Asa is trapped in a body as tormented as his mind.

So after Alex chastised me for a bit more, she asked me to read a book she loved. It was Cruddy, by Lynda Barry. I love Lynda Barry, I’ve met her and I’m a fan of her person and her work; but have you read this book? It’s good and tragic and funny, and it contains so much gross stuff, scabs and flakes and itches that are exponentially worse than the phrase “butt rust.” Cruddy even needs to have that big reg “C” on the cover, for cannibalism.

Alex had no trouble with anything in Cruddy. But she couldn’t handle “butt rust.”

My pledge

Consider this a pledge: You will never read a book that contains cannibalism written by me. But I just might break out “butt rust” again. So be prepared.

CAMILLE TATE always tells herself to calm down, but her instincts always warn her to disappear.

After the fright of her first weeks on Orcas Island, Cam wants a quiet Thanksgiving with her family and a few friends. She’s hoping that time with her foster parents will help her recover from the horror of witnessing a shooting and being kidnapped.

But her employers, the Brixtons, are arriving, along with a few unexpected visitors from Cam’s past. Her peaceful holiday is nowhere to be found. When her neighbor’s home is burglarized and ransacked, Cam’s world is threatened, too. As mysterious intruders haunt her island life, Cam realizes that the intrigue is far from over.

SO MANY valentines reference hotdogs that I hardly know where to start. I have left off the examples that have people carrying around hotdogs, leaving those in the strange meat valentine category. These are hotdogs without people. Just hotdog after hotdog. Self-slicing hotdogs. Amorous hotdogs. Married hotdogs. And there are the lonely hotdogs, and the pairs of hotdogs, and the hotdogs seeking buns. Hmm. There seem to be so many plays on the word “relish,” which has fallen out of favor these days except as a condiment, and on the word “frank,” which is likewise not used much anymore.

At least this little skunk is killing himself for love, and not the object of his skunkish affections. But this next one is worse. It appears to have instructions for how to do away with yourself (and a happy ending, thank goodness).

I really have to wonder about the level of frustration in the lives of designers of vintage valentines. I’m getting a little weirded out.

I don’t know how these tie in with the idea of romance, either. Cannibalism and butchery shouldn’t be part of the romance plan, should it? Were all the designers of vintage valentines secretly serial killers?

My intention is to do a future post devoted to hotdog valentines, which figure prominently in the vintage valentine lexicon of love. But I’ve included the ones with people and hotdogs here, because, well, meat. However, we have steaks, baloney, wurst and hotdogs, and…veal. But let’s start with a lovingly rendered slice of marbled beef, because I know that says romance to so many.

Kinda grooving on the baloney slicer, I won’t lie. I’m sure the true bonds of love are formed with sausage links when, for instance, you cook breakfast for someone. Okay, maybe not. However I do love this one. Especially that little dog. The rubber gloves, the cleaver, the deranged grin, the oddly clean apron–Boy, I bet that guy gets a lot of dates.

I think I look all right, but people seem to think I’m on an eternal episode of What Not to Wear. I attract fashion advice, and I don’t really know why. Do I look that strange?

My fashion advisor

Sometimes, it’s entertaining. One friend who has given me a lot of fashion pointers over the years is a five-foot-tall New Yorker. The first piece of fashion advice she ever gave me was to wear boot cut jeans. This was in the nineties, and as a woman of 5’11”, I was at the mercy of tall jean manufacturers when it came to the arrival of the boot cuts. I promised her I’d give them a try just as soon as I could. Tall boot cuts arrived on the market, I put them on, my friend was right, and she earned lifetime rights to telling me how to dress. She’s a coach, so she tells a lot of people how they should be doing things. It’s almost cost her friends before (I am thinking of the Great Male Eyebrow Waxing Debacle), but it will never cost her my friendship because I understand that this is just how she is.

Over the years, she’s sent me links to some strange clothing choices for a woman who lives in the home city of Columbia Sportswear and Keens. “These would look great on you,” she said of sequin-and-embroidery embellished jeans with velvet tuxedo stripes down the legs. “I wear these, they are so fun,” she said of crotcheted beaded hip scarves. The height thing has never made sense to her. She has sent me links to tie-dyed maxis that would be midis on me, and shorter dresses that would be tunics. She can’t quite figure out the difference between the wardrobe of a Lilliputian New Yorker and Brobdinagian Portlander.

Things finally came to a head when we met in Vegas years ago. I will never fit in, in Vegas. I’ll always be that lady with the brown glasses and the clogs in Vegas, that lady from who looks like she’s from Oregon. I’m never going to have Vegas clothes. On that trip, she didn’t bug me about my heathered green v-neck tee or my Danskos, but she did keep pestering me to try on a Spanx bra that she loved. “You can sleep in it!” she told me. I don’t sleep in a bra. “But you could!” But I won’t.

She kept on, I kept demurring. The straps don’t adjust, I kept telling her. But she is 4’11” and I am 5’11” and she’d never had to consider the role of adjustable bra straps in the life of a woman my height. Finally, to make her stop, I did the wrong thing. I agreed to try it on. I went into the bathroom. “You have to put it on from the bottom up!” she called through the door, “Over your hips!” Nothing that fits around the top of me is going to slide up over the bottom of me, that’s just not how I’m built. So I put it on over my head and pulled it down. It fit nicely around my chest–right at armpit level.

Time for a turnaround

The trying on of this bra marked a turning point in my life. I stood there with that bra in my armpits and realized that a big part of the problem was my own. I was a partner in this because I was always trying to find a polite way to turn away fashion suggestions, like pleading cost or lifestyle or length issues. I was tired of making my point that way. I should have just said that I like a bra with hooks and underwires and cups and stretchy adjustable straps, and so she should just leave me alone about any bra I could (shudder) sleep in.

I decided to stop ignoring and skirting fashion advice. I decided to start openly rejecting it.

My hair advisor

This attitude helped me with another friend who really, really hated my hair. It’s long and I don’t color it. This friend, who works with me, found my hair horrifying. She started pestering me about it in my forties. She was devoted to getting me a smart, short, stylish haircut that I could keep properly dyed and, well, under control. She would say, quite firmly, “Don’t you want a cute short haircut? You’d look so much better with short hair, Karen.”

I am a tall, sturdy woman with strong facial features. I would look like kd lang if I had short hair. And though I admire kd and enjoy her music, I do not think her style conveys what I want to say about myself. I would express this. My friend wouldn’t let it die. She thought she was doing me a favor. I guess she thought that I didn’t know my hair was long, and I didn’t know it was going grey, so she had to keep telling me. Otherwise, you see, I wouldn’t be aware of what’s on my head. You know, like the people who tell you that you’re fat because the combined input of the scale, the mirror and the waistband of your jeans isn’t enough, you need helpful friends to let you know you’re getting to be quite a porker.

Anyway.

Discussions with this friend culminated in a heated coffee break discussion in which she said, “So, you have long grey hair that makes you look like a witch. Do you want to look like a witch?” I remember saying, quite emphatically, “Yes, yes I do. I want to look like a witch. That’s exactly what I’m going for, so please leave me alone about my hair.”

We haven’t discussed it since.

For the record, my New York friend wanted me to leave my hair long, but dye it dark brown while leaving two silver stripes at the front “like that chick on What Not to Wear.” This would have been a little too Elvira for me, and I told her that. Several times.

Everybody has opinions. No one seems to have considered that I look the way I look because I like it. I’m my own personal expert at handling the particular challenges of my chthonic proportions. I’m dressing pretty well within the bounds of good taste and poverty. I make missteps once in a while, but every single thing about my appearance is thought out and done on purpose. No one needs to tell me what to wear, or what not to wear.

The culprit

I blame a lot of this on the show What Not to Wear. While it was on, everyone in America now considered him or herself an expert on what other people should wear because of that show, which I used to watch. It was initially hilarious to see the women on that show with their fashion missteps. We cringed at the breast-baring Ren Faire dresses, the quilted jackets made of hemp and misguided artistic intentions, the tiny club dresses that revealed personal grooming habits.

Yes, there were the overwhelmed moms who hated their post-pregnancy bodies so much that they were simply swathing themselves with whatever fabric was at hand, but they were not the majority on that show. Most of the women who were secretly filmed, humiliated at screenings, and bullied by their friends and families into going on the show, actually adored their clothes. They were wearing just what they wanted to, in just the way they wanted to wear it.

If you’re an astrophysicist and what you want to wear is a wolf t-shirt, a denim miniskirt and some bowling shoes, well, have at it, I say. Wear that, rather than the Clinton and Stacy Outfit They All Got. Which was this: a tailored jacket over a flowy blouse over wide leg trouser jeans, and heels. There were slight variations, but this was the look that Clinton and Stacy really believed in it, for every woman, all women, all shapes and sizes, this was IT.

Now, if you love this outfit, then have at it. Wear it every day. But I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to wear that outfit! You can wear what you want. Let your freak flag fly.

But the funny thing is…

When I look back, I realize the style I had while I was on What Not to Wear — the pencil skirts and sheath dresses, the floral and ruffled tops — does not reflect who I am now. It reflects the television persona I gave up a long time ago. It no longer “fits.” (Pun intended.) I dress much more androgynously than I did when I was younger. Frilly, girly clothes don’t have enough gravitas for me. I like suits and leather and jumpsuits, and I almost exclusively wear pants. I am pretty sure this change in my style happened quite naturally. But there have been times when I’ve worried this change won’t sit well with fans of my old look, that I’ve ostracized them, that I am no longer playing by the rules I prescribed to countless women over the course of the show. More than anything, I don’t want people who have believed in my advice over the years to feel I’ve betrayed them by no longer “looking the part.” The fact is, my public persona was only ever “part” of who I was to begin with. The Stacy I was in 2002 cannot possibly be the Stacy of 2016. Age is part of time, and does in fact change things.

So Stacy herself has turned over a fashion leaf, and now she looks like this.

Do you love it? I love it. It has nothing to do with me or my style, but I love it on her. If you don’t, well, go put on those wide leg jeans. Me, I’ll just be over here, brushing out my witch hair.